For decades, the Democrats were the party that promised to deliver a new, more progressive social order, with a reputation as the party of the angry “forgotten man” and of all those who hoped for a new deal. The GOP, on the other hand, was the party of order, stability, and conservatism — the party of the “silent majority.”
This year, those roles are more clearly reversed than ever before. Democrats — acting as the party of order — warn of the destabilizing and chaotic effects of Republican rule. Republicans — acting as the party of radical change — demand a scrambling of the rules of the game. This big shift has accompanied two others: Democrats gaining the upper hand in popular support as well as in the rat race for donors. It’s the great role reversal of 2024.
If Donald Trump’s Republican Party is now the party of “radical” economic change, as the Financial Times recently warned, it is not radical in anything resembling the left-wing sense.
The rules of the game it intends to shred are, in the main, those that offer some dignity and hope to immigrants, trans people, women, and other oppressed groups. The change Republicans are after is reactionary in direction: sabotaging the country’s excruciatingly slow transition out of a fossil fuel economy, tearing up workplace safety protections and union rights, and handing out a new round of generous tax cuts for the rich.
And yet, with Trump slightly but consistently behind in the polls and desperate to win — and in characteristically chaotic fashion — his campaign has also…
La suite est à lire sur: jacobin.com
Auteur: Neal Meyer
